We're just back from a very interesting visit to the new Cube Bikes facility in Germany and the launch of their new 2017 product range.

Cube are still a relatively new brand within the UK market place, but have been a major force within the industry with our near continental neighbours since founded in 1993.

They have very quickly established themselves as the 4th biggest brand, behind some longer established competition and continue to give others a run for their money.

As with the majority of the quality bike brands, Cube have their German designed frames built in the far east, where the quality manufacturers are based, however, Cube bring the frames

Our trip to Cube was titled "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and we weren't to be disappointed as getting to Cube was not the most straight forward journey. Glasgow to Heathrow then onwards to Munich, catching 3 trains to get to our final destination of Waldershof. With none of us speaking a word of German it was bound to go wrong somewhere! We got caught out by the train carriages splitting up with our one going in the wrong direction, after a small wait in a random town and a nice coffee and bit of cake,  we eventually made it to our hotel just outside Cube and all I can say is Fawlty Towers and with with toilet doors made of see through glass it was definitely something else.

The

Giant 2017

There is a great buzz down at Giant headquarters in Leicestershire right now with the 2017 launch in full swing.   Simon and Debbie headed there on Friday and came back armed with all the news of what's new for 2017 and exciting things happening at Giant.

Giant have introduced many new platforms especially on the mountain bike side and to allow you to see what all the fuss is about we will be reintroducing the demo fleet of bikes to let you get out and ride them.  Details coming soon on this.

Great new striking colours on the bikes matched with the forks, saddle and rims to tie the whole thing together.  All these wee touches just make the difference.

The electric bike offering this year has increased and

After winning the first SXC race of the season at Laggan, the races through the end of April to June unfortunately didn't really go to plan.

I was training hard but I also had to balance my time with school exams. In doing this I was gradually becoming more and more tired and this was showing in races, with me not getting the results I was looking for, and also in training where I was not able to recover from hard training sessions.

While down in Wales on a particularly wet and muddy weekend, just after my exams had finished, I had my worst race this season. I was feeling really tired and not going very well on the uphill but also struggling on the descents because the conditions were so hard.

I finished the race in 15th place. After this race I had a chat with the Scottish mountain bike